Why Some of 2017’s Best Games Missed My Top 10

The following games could easily be someone’s top 10 of 2017. It says a lot about the quality of games in 2017 that I have ten more games I liked more than these. The problem is, we all like top 10 lists. They’re fun exercises, and I had to make some harsh cuts. The following games all meant a lot to me. I want to honor them all with a shout out, but also explain why they missed the mark. I’ll follow up soon with my actual top 10 list. Enjoy!

I wish I could bottle up my first few weeks with Destiny 2 and come back to them whenever I need a nostalgia trip. It truly felt like Destiny had started to realize its potential. But the more I played, the more I noticed the holes. Where were the cool secrets, like the Black Spindle quest from Destiny 1? When were we going to return to the stories of Eris, Variks, and The Queen? Where was the endgame? At this point Destiny 2’s situation has gotten much worse, with the controversy around microtransactions completely overtaking the conversation. But man, those first few weeks were really good.

My love for developer Machine Games’ work goes all the way back to Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Needless to say, I was over the moon for most of Wolfenstein II. Unfortunately, the last act rushes to the ending, as if the team was suddenly forced to finish the story under duress. The tone and pacing was off in a way that cast a shadow over the rest of the game for me. I was distracted enough to take a more critical look. And if I’m being entirely honest, Wolf II just wasn’t very fun to play.

The biggest issue with Nier: Automata is that it’s a Platinum game that doesn’t live up to the Platinum pedigree. Platinum’s involvement was supposed to fix the flaws of the original Nier. Instead, we got a repeat of Yoko Taro’s revelatory storytelling…and a repeat of gameplay that can’t quite live up to it. For many, this was enough. For me, it was a bit too much déjà vu. If the collaboration ever happens again, I hope we get the same Platinum that made Bayonetta 1 & 2.

Breath of the Wild is a brave and unexpected game coming from Nintendo. It has more in common with Far Cry 2 than any previous Zelda game. It can also be incredibly boring and directionless if you wander in the wrong direction. Journey to a tower in the distance and it’s more or less guaranteed that it will start raining by the time you get there, preventing you from climbing it. The main quest often fails to capitalize on the systems-driven open world, drawing more attention to its limitations than its strengths. BOTW is so much more than these complaints, but these issues were enough to keep me from devoting hundreds of hours to it like so many others.

Mario Odyssey goes for it. Few ideas seem to be off limits, and the result is a game full of incredible highs, and enough lows to keep it off of my top 10. New Donk City is one of Mario’s all-time great worlds, but you have to pass through a few pretty dry locations to get there. The Bowser encounters are incredible, but the Broodals are ugly and uninspired. The movement controls blossom into something incredible once you start combined long-jumps, dives, and hat-throws; but, they’re soured by bad, mandatory motion controls that are completely impractical in the Switch’s portable mode.

Nintendo’s platform is the biggest obstacle between Splatoon 2 and true greatness. It’s cute that so many people love the game as a “solo multiplayer” game, but that’s no excuse for Nintendo’s Y2K-Dreamcast-tier online service. When I did manage to get friends together to play (with voice chat courtesy of a Google Hangouts call), Splatoon 2’s excellent gameplay rose above the hassle. Plus, it convinced me that motion controls can be truly great if done right.

Doki Doki Literature Club feels like generic anime wish fulfillment for a couple hours. And even when it suggests that there is more going on behind the scenes, there’s really no reason to trust it yet. When the turn happens, though, it’s brutal, upsetting, and reframes the opening hours with value and purpose. DDLC is a tough game to recommend outright, but if you’re interesting in a mindfuck, this is for you.

Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds was a phenomenon I didn’t expect to experience in 2017. Luckily I got my hands on a capable gaming PC right at the end of the year. I get it now. PUBG introduces a level of tension and anxiety to multiplayer combat that I haven’t experienced outside of a handful of games. PUBG also represents the most time I’ve spent playing games with a mouse and keyboard since Half-Life 2. This game is cool, but personally, I’m more excited for the first console/controller-focused copycat.

Dirt Rally and Resident Evil 7 demonstrated that dense, fully-featured games can work in VR. Statik, on the other hand, is a reminder that a game that works within VR’s limitations can be just as satisfying. This puzzle game confines you to a chair with a strange device shackled to your hands, giving a perfect 1:1 sensation of sitting in a chair with a controller. From there it presents a sequence of really fun and creative puzzles with some light storytelling stringing it all together. The game ends sooner than I would have liked, but that also means that each puzzle is a wholly original idea.

This is where this list starts to give me some trouble. I loved Prey. It’s a game I intend to return to. My issues with it are minor. I even loved some of the things that people criticized it for — namely, the ending. Prey is a systems-driven game in the Thief-Bioshock-Dishonored-Deus-Ex-mold. It’s rumored that it may have been called System Shock 3 at one point, and it lives up to that distinction. It features a massive, fully-realized space station packed with possibilities. And while we got lucky with this sub-genre in recent years, these kinds of games are still rare, and they take a hell of a lot of work to create. Developer Arkane should be proud of what they did here.

My number 11 game of the year. Gravity Rush 2 is ambitious, unique, and refreshing. Exploring its world is an absolute joy. I didn’t want it to end. I was surprised by the strange and wild directions the story took. Sure, it felt like they threw in the story of Gravity Rush 3 just in case they never get to make another one (and they probably won’t), but that just made it feel like a true journey in the end. Most of all, Gravity Rush 2 had some things to say about class structures, wealth, and poverty, which it told through the open world and gameplay in an impactful way.

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3 comments

Nice list of runner ups. I agree with you on Nier. Add in a crappy PC port and I wouldn’t even place it in my top 20. It had its moments, but it’s been a year and it still hasn’t received a single update. The gameplay was hit and miss for me too. I was not a fan of everything that was thrown in here.

Wolfenstein 2 was my second favorite game to release last year :).

I have a serious love/hate relationship with Breath of the Wild. The story sucks, exploring is pointless because the rewards suck, and it’s a pretty empty game. I can run around for hours and not find anything to do. I enjoyed it and didn’t enjoy it. Some times I love it and most of the time I think it’s one of the worst Zelda games ever made.